Animal Welfare in Australia

ACAC

Veterinary behaviourist Kirsty Seksel says : “the sad reality is that many of the dogs relinquished to these groups (Rescue Groups) are not suitable for rehoming and should be euthenased in the interest of the long term welfare of the dog. Unfortunately there is little if no expertise in many of these groups to assess the suitability of these dogs for rehoming purposes”

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DRP Comment:

This is an important article to read and understand. Kirsty Seksel is the CEO of ACAC – an industry lobby group that has manoeuvred itself into positions of giving governments advice on dog and cat matters. She is a member of the current NSW Companion Animal Taskforce, which has recently taken 2 years to come up with some recommendations to NSW Ministers. I won’t comment on the Taskforce recommendations here, other than to say that of course, ………….no commercial vested interests will be unduly inconvenienced if the proposals are accepted.

A worrying development is that this “expert” has recently appeared at Blacktown Pound to give “advice” to management., The result was that 5 dogs earmarked to go to Rescue Groups were summarily executed.

Open question to Kirsty Seksel : “Ms Seksel, what exactly have you, or your commercial entities, done in the past to increase rehoming rates from pounds/shelters?”

If you want to know more about ACAC, just use the search facility on the home page.

Whilst we certainly agree with the sentiment of allowing residents of aged care facilities to keep their pets, there are some alarming messages embedded in the article that those involved in companion animal advocacy and rescue will need to pay attention to.

Firstly, printed articles like this get out to a very wide readership; 5000 copies are distributed, and then there is the e-version which will go to many readers. Rescue groups and animal welfare advocates are just not competing with this.

Kirsty Seksel (ACAC) has managed to get herself into this article and is using it as a vehicle to send some messages that we should not under-estimate.

“as president of the Australian Companion Animal Council (ACAC) the nation’s peak body for the pet care industry” . Message: ..listen to us….

“…… among a range of factors ACAC is investigating in an attempt to arrest the declining level of pet ownership in Australia. According to the non-profit organisation, between 1994 and 2009 Australia experienced a 22 percent increase in human population, whilst at the same time there was a 10 per cent decrease in the number of pet dogs and 20 percent decrease in number of pet cats”

Message: They are very concerned about declining owned –animal numbers. We know this; this is a drum Seksel and others have been banging for a very long time. The Vet Associations are very concerned about declining owned pet numbers. Obviously it will affect their businesses. The massive numbers of un-owned animals in pounds and shelters are not of concern to them – there is no money in pound animals. That is the whole point of the messages that Seksel is sending in this article.

Seksel (The ACAC representative on the NSW Taskforce) says that “the responsibility for many of the deaths (in pounds) can be laid at the door of people who breed dogs and cats without thinking of the consequences”.

Fine, we can agree with that, but then she goes on to say “We need to breed animals that are suitable as pets and that’s a big issue”.

Now we agree with that statement, but what she is not saying is that she is laying a path to the Breeders (……. who are members of ACAC). She is NOT saying – if you want a pet, get it from your pound or RSPCA or AWL. ( My personal view, I have no problem with responsible breeders, but let’s empty the pounds first…) READ MORE HERE

The following text is taken from the Deathrowpets submission to the NSW CA Taskforce public discussion document, June 2012. It sets out our perspectives on the stacking of the Taskforce membership with members predominantly having strong commercial vested interests in the pet industry. The document contains many links to various documents created by these organisations that should be on the public record. This submission will be made available to the public by the NSW Taskforce.

As part of our submission, we wish to comment on membership of the Taskforce. Membership of the Taskforce has a significant context to the findings and recommendations set out in the discussion paper.

(Underlined references below are hyperlinks to documents)

Australian Companion Animal Council (ACAC),

An industry body with strong commercial vested interests in maintaining high numbers of animals in the market; specifically established to counter the growing voice of public opinion and advocacy which seeks to stop the killing of animals in pounds and shelters; specifically established to protect the commercial interests of pet industry members; no experience whatsoever in developing strategies to increase Rehoming rates and reduce killing rates in pounds and shelters. READ MORE HERE

Deathrowpets represents a large number of members of the community concerned with the number of unwanted companion animals that end up in pounds and shelters and the very significant numbers of these animals that are needlessly killed each year. I understand that you share these concerns.

We note that your organisation professes to be the “peak body” concerning companion animals and the pet industry in Australia. Therefore I believe it appropriate to pass on to you some questions that our members are asking. READ MORE HERE

The self-proclaimed “peak body” Australian Companion Animal Council (ACAC) are an industry lobby group with strong vested commercial interests in the pet industry. Read this post in conjunction with Who are ACAC?

Their member organisations are all groups who have actively campaigned at government level against iniatives aimed at stopping the slaughter of unwanted companion animals in pounds and shelters:

So why is the Animal Welfare League a member of this group? What are they doing there? Maybe there is an explanation? So we wrote this letter on March 10 2011 to the President of AWLA Grant Robb: READ MORE HERE

A self proclaimed “peak body” ! From their website : we are …”the peak body representing pet ownership and the pet industry in Australia.” ( Note: they did originally say representing ‘companion animals ‘ but must have changed it after reading our letterwhere we asked about ‘unwanted companion animals’)

They write lots of glossy papers you can download, the content of which is probably quite good in itself, especially those on pet ownership and renting*

This blog….

.....provides information and developments related to progress in creating change in companion animal welfare in Australia. We are not about reinventing the wheel, and so where others have already communicated a story, we will link to their site, and say 'thank you' in advance!
Please feel free to comment; but we will remove any comment that breaches the commonly accepted standards of civil communication!

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